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Elements of Horror in Statius' Thebaid

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Elements of Horror in Statius' Thebaid Faculteit Letteren & Wijsbegeerte Nick Brantegem Elements of Horror in Statius' Thebaid Masterproef voorgelegd tot het behalen van de graad van Master in de taal- en letterkunde Engels - Latijn 2014 Promotor Prof. dr. W. Verbaal Vakgroep Letterkunde Acknowledgements There are a great deal of people without whom I could never have finished this thesis. First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Prof. Dr. Wim Verbaal for his great deal of patience, honesty and support, and for providing me with this thesis topic that was very much situated in my fields of interest, and who, subsequently, actually allowed me to write about it. Another person I must thank, though I have never met him, is Prof. Noëll Carroll, whose efforts in the field of horror studies made this thesis possible. Not a lot of people have dared to write such an extensive work on the characteristics of horror, and certainly, none have succeeded at doing so more than him. Without his book to guide me through the dark recesses of horror, I would have been lost for a very long time. I would not dare forget to thank my family, for all the help and support they’ve given me over the last two years. My mother and sister in particular were always there to support me with the same old encouragements and they actually worked more than I thought they would. I am also very grateful to my brother, Tom, and my dear friend, Silke B., who both proofread and spellchecked a large part of my thesis and pointed me to the fact that I use the word “simply” far too much. Lastly, I would like to thank three of my closest friends who helped me a lot, all in their own way and as well as anyone possibly could. First of all, Thijs D.L. for the endless encouragement, for constantly letting me complain to him about how unfair life is. Second, Devin A. for always believing in me even when I thought it was annoying, and the last person I want to explicitly thank is Ismaëlla T., for all the practical help she gave me, for always letting me call her when I had a question, and who probably calmed me down a lot more than she realizes. I have faced a very rough patch in my life in the last year and a half, which is one of the reasons why I struggled so much to finish this. Not just the people I have already mentioned, but many others wished me the best of luck, and told me to hold on, to keep going, … even through failure, which was never easy on me, but they all made achievable. I cannot go on to name all of them, but they have my sincerest gratitude. ii Preface When I decided to write my thesis on Latin Literature, I immediately wished to write something about a work within the epic genre. Since so much had already been written on the more well- known epics, I asked my supervisor, Prof. Dr. Verbaal, for some other classical epics. When he opted for Statius’ Thebaid, it was an easy decision to make. I did not know a lot about the Thebaid, but the possible research ideas my supervisor provided seemed very interesting. One of those in particular instantaneously caught my eye. It appeared that in the entirety of classical literature, there were some works that contained certain scenes that were exceptionally horrifying. The Thebaid was most certainly one of these works, which became instantly clear after reading it. My entire life, I have adored the horror genre. Whether it in books or films, I had always been fascinated by it; from the moment I saw A Nightmare on Elm Street on a far too young age, and, to this day, I can still enjoy both old and new works of horror. Thus, my own personal love for the horror genre combined with my love for classical epics made the decision final. Truly, from the moment my supervisor spoke the word “horror”, I honestly already knew what my thesis would be about. Of course, when writing a thesis on a subject such as mine, it is only logical to be well-informed on the topic of horror. While I have watched and read my share of horror stories, that on itself was obviously not enough of a basis for an academic research. This prompted me to look up as much as I could on the horror genre and my findings were actually quite underwhelming. It seemed very little had been written on the genre of horror and I needed to intensify my search. Sadly, there was no single, celebrated poetics on the horror genre. While this made things more difficult, I was still able to get very well acquainted with the genre and its characteristics through a more philosophical work on the genre and the writings of the very great authors of modern horror. A consequence of this was that the first part of this thesis would have to be on the horror genre itself. This allowed me to immerse myself even more in and I feel like it really broadened my understanding of it to a large extent, which was, again, quite crucial in writing this thesis. I will admit that I started out in the hopes of discovering some antecedents of the horror genre in the Thebaid. However, it quite quickly appeared that a venture of that sort was unwise. I had to admit that the horror genre in itself was far too bound to the modern age for such a daring speculation to make sense. Nonetheless, that realization did not damage my resolve in any way. The gruesome, horrifying scenes of the Thebaid did indeed seem to have some of the characteristics I read about and an analysis of these still seemed very much worthwhile. iii Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1 What is Horror? ............................................................................................................... 3 1.1 Prologue ................................................................................................................................................ 3 1.2 Analysis of horror characteristics .................................................................................................... 5 1.2.1 The Monster ........................................................................................................................... 5 1.2.2 Mirroring-effect .................................................................................................................... 8 1.2.3 Plot structure ......................................................................................................................... 9 1.2.4 Suspense ............................................................................................................................... 11 1.2.5 The Drama of Proof ............................................................................................................. 12 1.2.6 The Paradox of Horror ....................................................................................................... 14 1.2.7 Terror, Horror, Gross-out .................................................................................................. 17 1.3 List of characteristics ........................................................................................................................ 18 1.3.1 General .................................................................................................................................. 18 1.3.2 List ......................................................................................................................................... 19 Chapter 2 Elements of Horror in Statius’ Thebaid ........................................................................ 20 2.1 Tydeus ................................................................................................................................................. 22 2.2 Amphiaraus ........................................................................................................................................ 31 2.3 Polyneices and Eteocles.................................................................................................................... 40 Conclusion 49 Bibliography 54 Thesis word count: 27208 words iv Introduction In this day and age, there is a considerable amount of novels, films, video games, etc. within the genre of horror. This prominent genre, however, is actually still fairly modern as most scholars would consider its starting point to be Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto in 1764. Nonetheless, even before the eighteenth century, there were several books that contained one or more horrifying scenes, or several paintings with horrifying imagery (e.g. religious art in the 15th and 16th century)1. While these works could hardly be said to have been part of a “horror genre” at that time, they must certainly contain some elements that make them so unsettling to us. In this thesis, we will attempt to analyse these “horror” elements in Publius Papinius Statius’ Thebaid, a first century epic. In brief, it is the story of the two sons of Oedipus, Eteocles and Polyneices and the war they wage against each other only to end in the death of both of them and many more warriors. At the beginning, Oedipus curses his sons for the way they have mistreated him and prays to the gods of the Underworld to punish them. By doing so, he sets in motion the building conflict between the two brothers. While Eteocles reigns over Thebes, Polyneices receives support from Argos and six other commanders (together they form the “Seven Against Thebes”) and engages Thebes on the battlefield. The Thebaid is indubitably a work that belongs to the epic genre of classical literature. In no way will we attempt to question that statement, nor is it our aim to do something as presumptuous as to prove that the Thebaid
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